Neapolitan
by SummerPeach
Summary: Naruto challenge involving everyone's favorite speech-impaired kunoichi, an awkward mystery date and a friggin huge Neapolitan sundae.


AN: This was a challenge set by simplyjoox382. I'll list the conditions after, for those interested. As should be obvious, I don't own Naruto, although Shikamaru may own my heart. /sigh

Neapolitan

Hyuuga Hinata was flustered. Luckily, this was a state of mind that she was used to being in. It typically involved rubbing the tips of her forefingers together in front of her face in a weak attempt to cover the brilliant crimson of her blushing face, and even more typically in the company of one loud-mouthed, orange-haired shinobi whose aura was one more of noise than any color of the rainbow.

Forefingers rubbing. Check. Blushing red. Check. Shinobi. Check. As for the rest, it was very, very wrong.

Hinata peered down awkwardly, staring at her distorted reflection in the spoon. A mere three inches from the spoon was an enormous sundae, roughly the size of Pluto, topped with a mountain of whipped cream that would have lit Akimichi Chouji's eyes with distinct and absolute pleasure (and perhaps even some drool). Atop that mountain of whipped cream was one ostentatiously large, cheerfully red cherry. And atop that cherry was a huge expanse of air and space and silence and, and, and.

Hinata looked back down at the spoon.

It was a Neapolitan. The sundae, not the spoon.

Hinata privately did not precisely like Neapolitans. She would not say that she did not like them exactly, per say. But she preferred vanilla. However, being the heir to an ancient bloodline of nobility, history and tradition meant that Hinata sometimes had to deal with things that she did not precisely like.

...she did not like real strawberries in her icecream. Or real cherries, for that matter. She did not like when the vanilla that she loved mingled with the pink of the strawberries. And horror of horrors, the strawberry and chocolate. At least the sweetness of the strawberry meshed well with the mellowness of the vanilla. But chocolate? Chocolate? Chocolate just did not belong there. The tastes collided and not in entirely pleasing ways either. Hinata liked things to be simple. She lifted the spoon, and brought a tiny sliver of vanilla icecream to her lips and tasted it.

Naruto would have mashed all the flavors together, and eaten them with abandon. He'd probably even claim that they tasted better that way, although Hinata knew better. She'd be convinced anyway. Naruto. Hinata's face burned red. Naruto would have smiled his foxy-big smile that melted Hinata in all of the wrong ways. Naruto would have made her collapse into a fluttery mess of queasy butterflies. Naruto would have made her love mashed up Neapolitans. Her spoon dug into the chocolate-strawberry divide with sudden braveness and the tiniest of smiles. The mouthful dissolved quickly on her tongue, and her nose wrinkled.

No.

Naruto would have ordered orange sherbet.

A cough.

Hinata looked up. Not-Naruto sat across the table from her. Naruto's aura of noise was replaced by an aura of dead silence. Blue eyes melted into green. Orange hair bled into red. Cute blonde fuzzy eyebrows faded away and were replaced with a tattoo of blood-red. Love.

Hyuuga Hinata was sharing the biggest Neapolitan sundae in existence with Gaara, and for the life of her, she could not figure out how this had happened.

She chose not to think about it. She licked the remainder of the icecream on the edges of her spoon slowly. Holding the spoon up to her face, icecream gone, she fidgeted in place. She looked down at the sundae, and considered a spoonful of chocolate. Her spoon slowly descended.

"Hinata."

The spoon froze for a second, and went right back to her lips, sans icecream. She squeaked.

She looked out the window, nibbling on her spoon awkwardly. More speechless than usual, Hinata turned an even darker shade of red. After a short pause, Hinata decided to brave the silence, and try to reach for some strawberry instead. Maybe strawberry would give her a better result. Maybe he'd let her eat half of the icecream in complete silence and maybe, just maybe when she walked home, on her own, she'd bump into Naruto and maybe... The spoon moved slowly towards the strawberry third of the sundae.

"Hinata."

And right back into her mouth and between her teeth. So strawberry wasn't safe either. Surely vanilla would-- She dared not try again.

"Will you please put down that spoon when I'm trying to talk to you?" Gaara's blank eyes bore into her face.

The spoon fell onto the lace tablecloth with a muffled clatter. "O-okay."

"Thank you." Only Gaara could make those two courteous words sound like a death omen.

Hinata looked longingly at the vanilla. It was melting. She looked longingly at her spoon. Gaara took two slow, languid bites of icecream. Strawberry.

Silence.

"It's melting." His tone sounded accusatory.

"But-but you-"

He took a big spoonful of vanilla icecream suddenly, Hinata was faced with a mass of vanilla pointed almost menacingly at her on a spoon. She blinked. Her mouth opened half in surprise, and half in-- she wasn't quite sure why, but she swallowed it obediently.

He looked pleased.

"Hinata."

"Y-yes?"

"You are single."

Her face, her poor, poor face could not be redder. She nodded, quickly, staring down at her spoon, agitated.

The spoon reappeared before her face. Chocolate, this time. Pristine, and unspeckled with vanilla or strawberry. She stared at it, wide-eyed. It jabbed at her, insistently. She leaned forward and had the chocolate too, her eyes still pointed downward. Her face looked wobbly in her spoon. Wobbly and smeared in pink and brown.

"Not anymore."

When Hinata's face shot up at that response, she was caught completely unawares. The spoon was gone, and replaced with Gaara. Or his lips. Or chocolate. Or she wasn't quite sure exactly what had happened, or when, or why, but when she had finally come to her senses, Gaara was gone, and her first kiss had been stolen. It tasted of chocolate.

Her fingers fluttered to her lips. Only one thought managed to creep into her shell-shocked mind.

She had never really particularly enjoyed orange sherbet anyway.

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AN: The three conditions: One, this has to be a story about Gaara. Two, the line "Will you please put down that spoon when I'm trying to talk to you" had to be used by somebody. Three, it had to be a HinataxGaara. So there you have it. It's been awhile, so please excuse any overt flaws or awkward writing. As always, comments and criticisms are welcomed and appreciated. That being said, thanks for reading.


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